FERRY NECK & SOME CHESAPEAKE ISLANDS, JUNE 5-9, 2011.
            A time mostly devoted to repairs, fixes, and maintenance.
            JUNE 5, SUNDAY.  Just 26 Turkey Vultures on the way down.  Run into Sid Dixon at Graul’s who has accomplished such exploits as engaging in a car race from London to Sydney and riding a motorcycle around the periphery of the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar to Morocco.  We see a Cooper’s Hawk soaring in company of a Turley Vulture S of Route 33 and E of Oak Creek, then about half an hour later presumably the same bird soaring over Newcomb.  
            At Rigby’s Folly 3 Snowy Egrets, 6 deer, and an adult Red Fox with a kit at the bend in the driveway, a favorite place for them.  A Yellow-billed Cuckoo gives its standard “too too too too too” call but with hardly any break time between calls, such that I stop counting after 100 toos.  At night a Red Fox utters its rather horrid barks 5 times, which have a creepy, blood-curdling but human quality.  We are present only from 3:30 P.M. onwards.     
            SW < 5 or calm, fair but hazy, 82°F. on our arrival.       
            JUNE 6, MONDAY.  Today taken up with a boat trip to 2 Dorchester and 2 Somerset County islands, a 30.4 statute mile venture, 9:15 A.M. – 5 P.M., with 6 landings and consequent walkabouts, or in some cases stumble- or staggerabouts in the uncertain marshy footing, once, on South Marsh Island, suddenly sinking up to my left knee and having to rely on my slightly arthritic right one for extrication.  
            Having already visited prime nearby locations on May 29 with Jared Sparks, today I concentrated on secondary ones, those mostly bereft of colonial waterbirds.  It’s exhilarating but a little intimidating, scary even, to go alone to these places, that are near wilderness.  I do not see one boat the entire time within hailing distance.  Most areas that have stretches of sand show where Diamondback Terrapin have depositied eggs.   
            On the way to the launching ramp at Crocheron: 84 vultures (mostly Turkey Vultures) perch on the white plastic fence just W of Stone Boundary Road and S of Route 16.  I’ve seen them here before and have no idea what the attraction is.  A ♂ Dickcissel along Egypt Road plus a drumming Pileated Woodpecker.  As is usual at this time of year Pool 1 at Blackwater has been drained and is loaded with 67 Great Egrets, 20 Great Blue Herons, and 4 Bald Eagles availing themselves of the stranded fishes, esp. Carp.  A deer in the field at the Hog Range area of Blackwater N.W.R.  
            Jenny Whitten and her father, Henry Gootee, set ‘the Mudhen’ to rights in a few minutes, the culprit a blown fuse and short that requires removing the center console panel.  Two Green Herons near Wingate.  Run across Bruce Peterjohn along Route 336, Chief at the Bird Banding Laboratory, who is doing a Breeding Bird Survey.  A Sika Deer near Crapo.  Low tide at Holland Island Bar is at 11:32 A.M. but it is a high low tide.            
            Weather on the water: just about perfect, temps in the high 70s, a gentle SW wind of 5-10 m.p.h. becoming N in mid-morning, strengthening slightly, then 15+ m.p.h. with whitecaps for the 12.4 mile run at day’s end back to Crocheron from SE South Marsh Island, but much of that in the lee of various islands.  Bird lists that follow are complete for all these island areas.
            BLOODSWORTH ISLAND, East side hammocks.  Good landbirding here today, by island standards.  9:30-10:30 A.M.  Two much-diminished hammocks are here, close but requiring 2 landings.  There used to be Great Blue Herons breeding in them but now all that is left are a few dead Eastern Redcedars, one live one (with a Boat-tailed Grackle nest), and 2 American Hackberries.  The hammocks are mostly surrounded by a nice meadow with about even areas of Spartina patens and Distichlis spicata.  
            4 Song and 12 Seaside sparrows, 1 Eastern Kingbird, 4 Gray Catbirds, 2 Common Yellowthroats, 3 adjacent Osprey nests, 1 Northern Harrier, 2 Marsh Wrens, 1 Red-winged Blackbird, 1 ♂ Boat-tailed Grackle, 2 Great Egrets, 6 Brown Pelicans, 55 Double-crested Cormorants, 2 Royal Terns (the last 3 species on the nearby pound nets), 4 Herring & 6 Laughing gulls, 2 Willets, and an imm. Bald Eagle.  100s of Seaside Dragonlets.  A dead Dimondback Terrapin.
            BLOODSWORTH ISLAND, Southeast side and the distant hammock there.  10:45-11:20 A.M.  I have not yet been able to determine how, by land or water, to get to the hammock but am able to see a Gray Catbird and a Song Sparrow there at some distance.  The hammock only has a few small live trees and a couple of dead ones.  One Northern Harrier, 3 American Black Ducks, 1 Great Blue, 1 Little Blue & 2 Tricolored herons, 2 Marsh Wrens, 12 Seaside Sparrows, 4 Laughing & 2 Herring gulls, 1 ♂ Boat-tailed Grackle, 4 Brown Pelicans, 3 Double-crested Cormorants, 1 Great Egret, 1 Osprey, and 1 adult & 1 immature Bald Eagle plus many Seaside Dragonlets.
            SPRING ISLAND (part of Blackwater N.W.R.).  Noon until 12:45 P.M., most birds seen from the boat.  1 ♀ Peregrine Falcon, 8 Seaside Sparrows, 1 American Oystercatcher, 1 ♂ Gadwall, 1 ad. Yellow-crowned Night & 1 ad. Little Blue heron, 6 Brown Pelicans, 4 Double-crested Cormorants, 3 Snowy & 2 Great egrets, 5 Mute Swans (distant and to the N; may have been 6 but choppy water made it hard to tell; by the time I landed the swans had disappeared), 2 Ospreys, and 2 Herring & 2 Great Black-backed gulls.  Also: 32 Diamondback Terrapin.
            Off the N end I cut the engine and the gentle but inexorably surging flooding tide wafts me N, in spite of the N wind, and away from the island.
            PRY ISLAND (a satellite of South Marsh Island and on its southwest side), Somerset County.  1-1:20 P.M.  Only an acre or 2 in size with a total of just 4 bushes.  A colony of gulls, c. 90% Herring, the rest Great Black-backed.  1 egg, 1 nest;  2 eggs, 12 nests;  3 eggs, 40 nests;  0 eggs, 3 nests = a total of 56 nests, none with youngsters.  Find 2 dead adult Herring Gulls.  4 American Oystercatchers, 4 Double-crested Cormorants, 3 Brown Pelicans, 3 Glossy Ibis, and 2 Diamondback Terrapin.  
            SOUTH MARSH ISLAND, shoreline of its southern end comprising c. 1/3 of its total shoreline.  1:30-2:45 P.M.  Slow, leisurely, 4.1-mile cruise within 100’ of shore with no landings.  There’s a string of attractive little beaches here and even some narrow, low, real dunes, topped with occasional tussocks of Panicum.  Most of this is unremitting saltmarsh, esp. Juncus roemerianus, unbroken except for a few bushes: Iva frutescens & Baccharis halimifolia.  Water temperature 73.8°F.    
            Black-bellied Plover 6, foraging on areas of exposed old marshy tumps, mostly barren of vegetation except for tangles of Phragmites roots.  4 American Black Ducks.  1 adult Bald Eagle.  4 Little Blue, 3 Great Blue & 3 Tricolored herons.  5 Glossy Ibis.  6 Seaside Sparrows.  6 American Oystercatchers.  Only 1 Boat-tailed Grackle and 1 Red-winged Blackbird.  6 Ospreys.  6 Brown Pelicans.  7 Great & 1 Snowy egret.  12 Double-crested Cormorants.  6 Herring Gulls.  Diamondback Terrapins widespread and energized by the rising tide: 161 of them.  Significantly, NO Willets.   
            SOUTH MARSH ISLAND, long, wide tidal gut on its east side with a small hammock on the gut’s west side and an adjacent c. 10-acre Spartina patens/Distichlis spicata meadow.  2:50-3:50 P.M.  Has several circular and unnatural-looking ponds around the hammock full of rust-colored water with much particulate matter and surrounded by a narrow growth of Scirpus.  Nearby in the meadow are 2 smaller ponds.  The hammock has 3 American Hackberries and 1 Black Locust, where small numbers of herons formerly nested.  I am surprised today to see some Asparagus.  
             6 Boat-tailed Grackles (a nest in the largest hackberry), 12 Seaside Sparrows, 4 Brown Pelicans, 1 Northern Harrier, 2 Ospreys, 4 Red-winged Blackbirds, 1 ad. Black-crowned Night Heron, 2 Great Egrets, 2 Purple Martins (probably from Deal or Smith Island).  1 Tricolored & 2 Little Blue herons, 2 Great Egrets, 4 Herring Gulls, and 11 Glossy Ibis.  
            Jared and I tried for over an hour in a recent year for Black Rails with my iPod in seemingly perfect BLRA habitat to no luck, although a Saltmarsh Sparrow approached closely and seemed very curious.  It is surprising not to find a Song Sparrow or Common Yellowthroat here.  Countless 100s of Seaside Dragonlets.   
            I am slightly startled to see a boat leaving the tidal gut.  As it exits I see it is a USF&WS craft with several aboard.  I am amused to see them, in the distance, flailing at the underside of the roof.  They must have picked up as many noxious flies as I have.  They seem headed for Deal Island.  Back at the landing I see their truck and trailer.  Still later they pass me on the right in Cambridge just before the American Legion hall.  I wonder what they were looking for?  There seemed to be fresh trails left around the hammocks N side, perhaps theirs.
            IN PAST YEARS South Marsh (and Pry) has had breeding pelicans, cormorants, oystercatchers, Common & Forster’s terns, and very small numbers of 5-6 heron species.  None of these has been present for a number of years.
            On the way back after boating: The American White Pelican at Sewards – the previous 2 times I was there I missed it.  A Gray Squirrel on Maple Dam Road N of Greenbrier Road.  Six Wood Ducks rising out of a ploughed field just N of there.  Six deer along Bellevue Road and 4 in our Field 4. 
             JUNE 7, TUESDAY.      Fair, hot, humid, SW 5-10 m.p.h., temperature rises to
87°F.
            Three young Gray Squirrels wrestle under the yard Willow Oak, a most appealing
sight.  Certainly this is play.  A little anthropomorphism doesn’t hurt a thing.  I am not
saying that these animals will progress to translating the Upanishads, discussing
Thomistic humanism, or, heaven forbid, receiving the stigmata, but certainly many
animals share some human qualities.
            “Ye blesséd creatures, I have heard the call/Ye to each other make; I see/The
heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;/My heart is at your festival,/My head hath its
coronal,/The fullness of your bliss, I feel – I feel it all.” –Wordsworth.  ‘Intimations of
immortality from recollections of early childhood.’
            After supper we sit on the dock until 9:09 P.M., at which time there’s still
some light to the west.  Liz hears a Fowler’s Toad and there’s a big chorus of Green
Tree Frogs.
            JUNE 8, WEDNESDAY.  Mowers do the lawn areas 6:50-7:10 P.M.  Spend 2.5
straight hours clearing the driveway overhang, 10 A.M. – 12:30 P.M., during which
there’s a kettle of 7 Ospreys with an adult Bald Eagle nearby, a calling Yellow-billed
Cuckoo, and a singing Indigo Bunting. 
            Fair, hot, gets up to 96°F., SW 5-10 m.p.h. 
            Every day there are 2 or 3 Tiger Swallowtails in the yard, that seem to favor the
hackberries and walnut trees, flitting around 20 or more feet up.
            JUNE 9, THURSDAY.  Overnight low 79°F., clear, calm, oppressive.  1 Red-tailed Hawk, 2 Snowy Egrets, 1 adult Bald Eagle, 1 Gray Squirrel.  It has become very dry.  We need a good rain or two badly.  The wetland area near routes 481 X 309 is almost dry but there is a Great Blue Heron there, probably after frogs.  A mere 25 Turkey Vultures on the way home.
            CORRECTIONS.  In the report on the Dorchester County May Bird Count of May 14 I neglected to include Barn Swallow in the list of “birds with highest totals.”  At 557 the swallow is 5th highest in between American Robin (1025) and Mallard (352).  The location of the Gray Fox of May 29 on Maple Dam Road is ADC county atlas map 30 at coordinates E4.  In that same report “jist” should be “gist.”  In the report for the period May 21-31 I listed observations on 2 different days as being for May 23; the first “May 23” should have been noted as May 22.  It’s worth mentioning that during our extensive boat trip to Dorchester islands on May 29 Jared Sparks and I encountered NO terns.
            BLACKWATER N.W.R. WILDLIFE DRIVE PARTIAL CLOSURE.  The section of the drive between the Key Wallace Drive exit and Route 335 is closed for a while for maintenance work.  This is the segment that takes one along Pools 5A-C.  
            Best to all. – Harry Armistead, Philadelphia. 		 	   		  

############################

To unsubscribe from the MDOSPREY list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=MDOSPREY&A=1